Trump’s Continual Messing With the Fed Has Germany, Italy, Thinking of Repatriating Their Gold

This is part of a recurrent theme. Donald Trump is posturing for the world and he loves the spectacle and pageantry of it all. That’s his focus in his second term, not the actual business of governing, but the glory of it all. That’s what the parade was about. That’s what the attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities was about. The editor of Business Insider wrote about Trump right after Saturday’s bombing, “He wants the Nobel Peace Prize and the TV to say that he deserves it. And he wants the angry half of his coalition to reconcile with him and admit they were wrong. Whether the nuclear program is gone or the war truly ends are beside the point. They’re not part of the pageantry and spectacle. He will lash out at anyone who spoils the pageantry and spectacle. Thank you for your attention to this matter.”

That’s what Trump is up to. That’s what right-wing media caters to and mainstream media is too afraid to say. But the rest of the world does not feel this way and they’re not involved in this dysfunctional family drama that the United States is caught up in. They want to take care of business as usual and business means money. And right now Financial Times is reporting that Italy and Germany have had enough of Trump’s instability and they might take back the gold that is stored at the Federal Reserve.

Ahead of Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s trip to Washington to meet Trump in April, economic commentator Enrico Grazzini wrote in the newspaper Il Fatto Quotidiano: “Leaving 43 per cent of Italy’s gold reserves in America under the unreliable Trump administration is very dangerous for the national interest.”

A survey of more than 70 global central banks this week showed more were thinking of storing their gold domestically amid concerns about their ability to access their bullion in the event of a crisis. The reliance of European central banks on the Fed as a gold custodian has long been a bone of contention.

Western European countries accumulated huge gold reserves during the economic boom in the two decades after the second world war, when they ran large trade surpluses with the US. Up to 1971, the dollar was converted into gold by the US central bank under the Bretton Woods system of fixed exchange rates.

Storing gold across the Atlantic was seen as a hedge against any potential conflict or war with the then-Soviet Union. Now the United States is threatening in a way that the Soviet Union never was and the fundamental logic doesn’t hold up anymore.

“When we started . . . we were accused of peddling conspiracy theories,” said Peter Boehringer, a precious metal expert who launched the original campaign and today is an MP for Germany’s far-right Alternative für Deutschland party.

In 2019 in Italy, Meloni’s far-right Brothers of Italy party, when still in opposition, lobbied for the repatriation of the country’s gold reserves. Meloni vowed to bring Italian gold home if her party came to power. However, since taking the premiership in late 2022, Meloni has been silent on the subject. She wants to maintain a friendly relationship with Trump while averting the threat of a deepening trade war.

For the moment, nobody is moving any gold. But even the fact that this is under discussion shows the deterioration of trust in the United States and how Donald Trump and MAGA are reducing this country from its once premiere status to that of banana republic.

And make no mistake, there is a direct correlation between Trump’s endless nattering about Jerome Powell and what a “loser” he is and all that childish jabber that sets reasonable men and women of all political stripes to seriously wonder what has happened to this country and what their future business dealings with us should be.

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